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kyatic's Reviews (974)
THIS BOOK IS SO BAD.
Not just because the majority of it reads like it was written by a 12 year old for a misjudged creative writing assignment, but because the author seems to be evil.
Some background: Norma Khouri is a Catholic from Jordan, whose best friend, Dalia, was murdered by her Muslim family because she fell in love with a Catholic man. Although they barely even kissed, the strict Muslim codes that her family - like all of Jordan's Islamic population - abide by mean that Dalia is murdered by her father and brothers to restore their honour. In response, Khouri promised to honour her friend by fighting against this practice of family murder, and bravely stood up to Dalia's family, before being forced to flee Jordan in fear for her life. The book is told in simple, often childish English, which makes sense - according to the publishers at Random House who were asked why they had published a book based solely on its synopsis and not its literary merits - as Norma spent her life in Jordan until she was forced to flee as a refugee to Greece when her own family threatened her. Married to the cause, she lived as a virgin refugee in Greece, unable to have any relationship with a man due to her conservative Arab upbringing which instilled a fear of sex, something she discusses in the Afterword of the book, and then moved to the US to publish her memoirs.
Except Norma Khouri is really Norma Bagain (now Toliopoulos), who lived in the US and then Australia from the age of 3, and Dalia never existed. Bagain is married to a Greek man, had two children when the book was published, and had been living in the US at the time that Dalia was supposed to have been murdered, in 1996. Bagain is suspected of being a serial con artist, with evidence suggesting that she is suspected of fraud (befriending an old woman with dementia and forging her signature on her will, borrowing and then never returning money from a neighbour to fight accusations in the US, lying about her children being those of a drug addict whom she had adopted) and whose husband is rumoured to have links to Greek crime rings in the US. She’s still in touch with her family, who never tried or threatened to kill her - although their relationship is strained due to unrelated accusations - and was never a refugee. She didn't heroically make a stand for women's rights which forced her out of the country of her birth, unless she was an oddly feminist 3 year old. The simple, often immature writing style of the book isn’t due to any language difficulties, as English is one of her first languages; it’s just because she has barely any discernible talent.
This book is thinly veiled Islamophobic propaganda. Bagain to this day asserts that she wrote it based on the real death of her friend and she just fudged the details so that her friend wouldn’t be identified, as this would put Bagain's own life in danger, but that’s been proven to be false. For a start, Bagain's life, she says, is already in danger because she went public with her story. For another thing, she has released pictures of the girl she says is Dalia. For a third, she was not living in Jordan for her adult life, so unless Dalia was a particularly close penpal, she didn't have a best friend living in Jordan who was murdered. She has nothing to lose by coming out with the full truth about Dalia's identity, and the sole reason that she hasn't done so is because Dalia is fiction. It’s basically just a book full of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric, released at a time when worldwide suspicion of Arab culture was at a high, with lengthy descriptions of how women in Jordan can’t leave their houses without a full veil and a chauffeur (which isn’t true) and how Islam is inherently misogynistic over every other religion (also not true). Of course honour killings happen and they are absolutely unforgivable, but the book made people think that every Arab family had at least one killing every generation.
Before it was exposed as a hoax, it was a bestseller. Now it’s out of print, which is good because I wanted to read it without giving the author any revenue, so had to buy it secondhand, and Bagain has disappeared from public life. It’s one of those literary hoaxes which has no merit. It was purely a money making scam, and it’s a bit of a bitter reminder of how willing people are to believe horrible things about certain groups of people.
The most charitable interpretation of this fraud is that Bagain heard about the practice of honour killing, and chose to write a novel which she felt exposed the crime, wrapping it up as memoir to improve its chance of being published and open a dialogue. This interpretation falls apart when you realise that Bagain never gave the money that the book raised to women's charities, as she'd promised (the promise is printed on the back of some editions of the book), and that she still maintains, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that this is not a novel, but a memoir. She also did not research the practice sufficiently, and caused damage to the awareness work of honour killings that was being undertaken by many women in Jordan. This book did not raise awareness of an actual, terrible phenomenon, but instead distorted the truth and made people angry about an imagined practice, which lessened their rage about the actual practice. That, to me, is unforgivable.
This book is full of mistakes which should have made its hoax status obvious. Bagain makes errors in geography and currency. She describes and names a real hospital but gives it a morgue in the basement, whereas the real hospital has no basement. She says that she and Dalia opened a salon for men and women, which would be illegal in Jordan. She describes buildings that weren't built at the time of the narrative. She describes the murderers getting bail, which is not part of Jordanian law. She says that they were tried by a jury, which murderers weren't. She says that the ambulance took Dalia's body away, which would have been the responsibility of the police. She says she went to an English school in Jordan that doesn't exist. Photos of 'Dalia', who comes from an extremely devout Muslim family, show her wearing hijab with her hair on display, which would not have been allowed in a family of that level of religious devotion. These facts were not checked - and are detailed in the documentary Forbidden Lie$ in more detail - not just because the publishers trusted Bagain, but because it was convenient to believe them. It makes us in the West feel good to see - or, more accurately, to believe - that the people in the East are frequently guilty of such awful things as Bagain describes, because it makes us feel better about our own failings; we get to say 'well, at least we don't do the things that they do in Jordan!'
Well, neither do the vast majority of the people in Jordan, or indeed the rest of the Arab world, and allowing books like this to be published without verification just furthers misinformation and prejudice. It's a shame Bagain was not prosecuted over this book. It's a relief that she's now exposed and discredited.
The 2* rating that this book has from me is based on the following:
3* for the book itself, devoid of context, read as though it were a novel and not wrapped up as non-fiction (death of the author, and all that)
1* for the author being a terrible plague upon the truth, who was allowed to get away with deceiving the world - and possibly with defrauding a string of other people - just as the father in her fictitious work was allowed to get away with murder
Not just because the majority of it reads like it was written by a 12 year old for a misjudged creative writing assignment, but because the author seems to be evil.
Some background: Norma Khouri is a Catholic from Jordan, whose best friend, Dalia, was murdered by her Muslim family because she fell in love with a Catholic man. Although they barely even kissed, the strict Muslim codes that her family - like all of Jordan's Islamic population - abide by mean that Dalia is murdered by her father and brothers to restore their honour. In response, Khouri promised to honour her friend by fighting against this practice of family murder, and bravely stood up to Dalia's family, before being forced to flee Jordan in fear for her life. The book is told in simple, often childish English, which makes sense - according to the publishers at Random House who were asked why they had published a book based solely on its synopsis and not its literary merits - as Norma spent her life in Jordan until she was forced to flee as a refugee to Greece when her own family threatened her. Married to the cause, she lived as a virgin refugee in Greece, unable to have any relationship with a man due to her conservative Arab upbringing which instilled a fear of sex, something she discusses in the Afterword of the book, and then moved to the US to publish her memoirs.
Except Norma Khouri is really Norma Bagain (now Toliopoulos), who lived in the US and then Australia from the age of 3, and Dalia never existed. Bagain is married to a Greek man, had two children when the book was published, and had been living in the US at the time that Dalia was supposed to have been murdered, in 1996. Bagain is suspected of being a serial con artist, with evidence suggesting that she is suspected of fraud (befriending an old woman with dementia and forging her signature on her will, borrowing and then never returning money from a neighbour to fight accusations in the US, lying about her children being those of a drug addict whom she had adopted) and whose husband is rumoured to have links to Greek crime rings in the US. She’s still in touch with her family, who never tried or threatened to kill her - although their relationship is strained due to unrelated accusations - and was never a refugee. She didn't heroically make a stand for women's rights which forced her out of the country of her birth, unless she was an oddly feminist 3 year old. The simple, often immature writing style of the book isn’t due to any language difficulties, as English is one of her first languages; it’s just because she has barely any discernible talent.
This book is thinly veiled Islamophobic propaganda. Bagain to this day asserts that she wrote it based on the real death of her friend and she just fudged the details so that her friend wouldn’t be identified, as this would put Bagain's own life in danger, but that’s been proven to be false. For a start, Bagain's life, she says, is already in danger because she went public with her story. For another thing, she has released pictures of the girl she says is Dalia. For a third, she was not living in Jordan for her adult life, so unless Dalia was a particularly close penpal, she didn't have a best friend living in Jordan who was murdered. She has nothing to lose by coming out with the full truth about Dalia's identity, and the sole reason that she hasn't done so is because Dalia is fiction. It’s basically just a book full of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric, released at a time when worldwide suspicion of Arab culture was at a high, with lengthy descriptions of how women in Jordan can’t leave their houses without a full veil and a chauffeur (which isn’t true) and how Islam is inherently misogynistic over every other religion (also not true). Of course honour killings happen and they are absolutely unforgivable, but the book made people think that every Arab family had at least one killing every generation.
Before it was exposed as a hoax, it was a bestseller. Now it’s out of print, which is good because I wanted to read it without giving the author any revenue, so had to buy it secondhand, and Bagain has disappeared from public life. It’s one of those literary hoaxes which has no merit. It was purely a money making scam, and it’s a bit of a bitter reminder of how willing people are to believe horrible things about certain groups of people.
The most charitable interpretation of this fraud is that Bagain heard about the practice of honour killing, and chose to write a novel which she felt exposed the crime, wrapping it up as memoir to improve its chance of being published and open a dialogue. This interpretation falls apart when you realise that Bagain never gave the money that the book raised to women's charities, as she'd promised (the promise is printed on the back of some editions of the book), and that she still maintains, in the face of overwhelming evidence, that this is not a novel, but a memoir. She also did not research the practice sufficiently, and caused damage to the awareness work of honour killings that was being undertaken by many women in Jordan. This book did not raise awareness of an actual, terrible phenomenon, but instead distorted the truth and made people angry about an imagined practice, which lessened their rage about the actual practice. That, to me, is unforgivable.
This book is full of mistakes which should have made its hoax status obvious. Bagain makes errors in geography and currency. She describes and names a real hospital but gives it a morgue in the basement, whereas the real hospital has no basement. She says that she and Dalia opened a salon for men and women, which would be illegal in Jordan. She describes buildings that weren't built at the time of the narrative. She describes the murderers getting bail, which is not part of Jordanian law. She says that they were tried by a jury, which murderers weren't. She says that the ambulance took Dalia's body away, which would have been the responsibility of the police. She says she went to an English school in Jordan that doesn't exist. Photos of 'Dalia', who comes from an extremely devout Muslim family, show her wearing hijab with her hair on display, which would not have been allowed in a family of that level of religious devotion. These facts were not checked - and are detailed in the documentary Forbidden Lie$ in more detail - not just because the publishers trusted Bagain, but because it was convenient to believe them. It makes us in the West feel good to see - or, more accurately, to believe - that the people in the East are frequently guilty of such awful things as Bagain describes, because it makes us feel better about our own failings; we get to say 'well, at least we don't do the things that they do in Jordan!'
Well, neither do the vast majority of the people in Jordan, or indeed the rest of the Arab world, and allowing books like this to be published without verification just furthers misinformation and prejudice. It's a shame Bagain was not prosecuted over this book. It's a relief that she's now exposed and discredited.
The 2* rating that this book has from me is based on the following:
3* for the book itself, devoid of context, read as though it were a novel and not wrapped up as non-fiction (death of the author, and all that)
1* for the author being a terrible plague upon the truth, who was allowed to get away with deceiving the world - and possibly with defrauding a string of other people - just as the father in her fictitious work was allowed to get away with murder
A Pride of Poppies
Adam Fitzroy, Z. McAspurren, Sam Evans, Jay Lewis Taylor, Julie Bozza, Barry Brennessel, Lou Faulkner, Wendy C. Fries, Charlie Cochrane, Eleanor Musgrove
Well researched, but it suffered from the tendency to cover the same kind of relationship. I appreciated the inclusion of lesbian and intersex narratives, but the vast majority of the plots were incredibly similar, which did decrease the dramatic tension in each story somewhat; they seemed to fit into the same template. A few stories could also have benefited from further editing and proofreading. Overall, it's a good collection and it's for a great cause - I just wish they'd been a little less focused on the typical soldier + soldier = forbidden affair in the midst of battle narrative.
